1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to stringed musical instruments. Specifically, the present invention relates to providing a transducer saddle system for a stringed instrument.
2. Background of Invention and Related Art
Acoustic stringed instruments typically comprise a hollow body portion coupled to a neck portion extending longitudinally from a side wall of the hollow body portion. Steel, nylon, or other materials are used to make strings that are stretched from the distal end of the neck portion to a point on the top surface of the body portion. At each end, the strings rest on raised bars made of a hard material such as hard plastic or ivory. In guitars, this raised bar is typically called a nut at the neck, and a saddle at the bridge. Each string on a stringed instrument, such as a guitar, is set to a fixed length and tension, the length being fixed between the nut and the bridge. The bridge is a device on the top surface of the body that receives the string and maintains the tension of the string. The bridge further interfaces the strings with body and transfers string vibrations to the guitar top, maintains proper height clearance of strings over the fretted neck, establishes scale length of vibrating string.
Acoustic stringed instruments can be amplified in several ways. A microphone may be placed in front of a sound hole formed on the top surface of the instrument. When plucked, the string vibrates in virtually all axes of direction in the plane perpendicular to the direction of the string. These vibrations are transmitted to the body via the bridge, resonate within the hollow body, and are emitted via the sound hole. The problem with using microphones is that the microphone picks up not only the sound of the vibrating string, but every other sound caused by playing the instrument such as string noise, bumps and taps, as well as ambient noise from other instruments etc. The microphone can further cause feedback by picking up noise from the instruments' vibrating top, which is further amplified by the surrounding speakers/amplifiers.
Also a microphone has a very limited volume range and is ineffective when competing with other amplified instruments.
Another technique involves the use of guitar pickups, in the form of electromagnetic coils, or and piezo-electric transducers. Typically, mechanically coupled acoustic guitar pickup designs employ various types of compressively sensitive transducer materials which are sandwiched between the guitar saddle and the surface of the instrument's bridge or bridge plate. Compressively mounted transducers beneath the saddle tend to have a characteristic pinched and compressed quality of sound. This approach yields little directional biasing or selectivity in the vibratory information that is picked up and amplified. Consequently on an acoustic instrument much micro-phonic noise is collected and amplified along with the desired “musical information”. Micro-phonic noise occurs when a pickup systems axis of sensitivity is mechanically coupled to the instruments resonant top. This coupling sensitizes the entire resonant surface of the instrument through the transducer system, causing every bump or knock on the instrument to be amplified. Micro-phonic sensitivity also increases feedback sensitivity because certain resonant frequency sensitivities in the instrument top become magnified, causing an uncontrollable feedback loop when the amplified signal excites the instruments top and strings through sympathetic resonances. Micro-phonic sensitivity also tends to yield an amplified sound which is “unfocused and boomy,” this occurs when sensitive resonant frequencies in an instrument overpower the rest of the spectrum.
What is needed is an amplification apparatus for a multi-stringed musical instrument that provides uni-directional sensitivity to vertical string vibrations. Additionally, what is needed is a pickup apparatus for a multi-stringed musical instrument which does not microphonocally sensitize the instruments resonant top so as to eliminate micro-phonic noise from the body of the instrument while remaining mechanically responsive to vertical string motion. Also, what is needed is a pickup apparatus for a multi-stringed musical instrument that senses each strings vibrational outputs individually with a high degree of isolation from adjacent strings. This to enable the balancing of the individual strings outputs relative to each other, and to perform this passively through the electro-mechanical calibration of the pickup structure, without relying on a multi channel, active circuit to balance the string output signals.